Organ Mountains (New Mexico)

Organ Mountains
Organ Mountains
	The Organ Mountains seen from the west
Dimensions
Length	85 mi (137 km)N-S
Width	42 mi (68 km)W-E
Geography
	Location of the Organ Mountains within New Mexico
Country	United States
State	New Mexico
Region	(northwest)- Chihuahuan Desert
District	Doña Ana County, NM
Range coordinates	32°19.6′N106°33.35′W / 32.3267°N 106.55583°W Coordinates: 32°19.6′N106°33.35′W / 32.3267°N 106.55583°W
Borders on	San Andres Mountains
Geology
Type of rock	granite, rhyolite

Last updated April 29, 2019

The Organ Mountains are a rugged mountain range in southern New Mexico in the Southwestern United States. Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument was declared a national monument on May 21, 2014.^[1] They lie 10 miles (16 km) east of the city of Las Cruces, in Doña Ana County.^[2]

New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern region of the United States of America; its capital and cultural center is Santa Fe, which was founded in 1610 as capital of Nuevo México, while its largest city is Albuquerque with its accompanying metropolitan area. It is one of the Mountain States and shares the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona; its other neighboring states are Oklahoma to the northeast, Texas to the east-southeast, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua to the south and Sonora to the southwest. With a population around two million, New Mexico is the 36th state by population. With a total area of 121,592 sq mi (314,920 km²), it is the fifth-largest and sixth-least densely populated of the 50 states. Due to their geographic locations, northern and eastern New Mexico exhibit a colder, alpine climate, while western and southern New Mexico exhibit a warmer, arid climate.

The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest, is the informal name for a region of the western United States. Definitions of the region's boundaries vary a great deal and have never been standardized, though many boundaries have been proposed. For example, one definition includes the stretch from the Mojave Desert in California to Carlsbad, New Mexico, and from the Mexico–United States border to the southern areas of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. The largest metropolitan areas are centered around Phoenix, Las Vegas, Tucson, Albuquerque, and El Paso. Those five metropolitan areas have an estimated total population of more than 9.6 million as of 2017, with nearly 60 percent of them living in the two Arizona cities—Phoenix and Tucson.

The Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument is a United States National Monument in the state of New Mexico, managed by the Bureau of Land Management as part of the National Landscape Conservation System.

Geography

The Organ Mountains are near the southern end of a long line of mountains on the east side of the Rio Grande's rift valley. The range is nearly contiguous with the San Andres Mountains to the north and the Franklin Mountains to the south, but is very different geologically. Whereas the San Andres and Franklin Mountains are both formed from west-dipping fault blocks of mostly sedimentary strata (with limestone most prominent), the Organ Mountains are made primarily of igneous rock (intrusive granite and extrusive rhyolite). Their name reflects their similarity in appearance (particularly the granite "needles" in the highest part of the range) with pipes that would be part of a pipe organ.

The Rio Grande is one of the principal rivers in the southwest United States and northern Mexico. The Rio Grande begins in south-central Colorado in the United States and flows to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way, it forms part of the Mexico–United States border. According to the International Boundary and Water Commission, its total length was 1,896 miles (3,051 km) in the late 1980s, though course shifts occasionally result in length changes. Depending on how it is measured, the Rio Grande is either the fourth- or fifth-longest river system in North America.

The Rio Grande rift is a north-trending continental rift zone. It separates the Colorado Plateau in the west from the interior of the North American craton on the east. The rift extends from central Colorado in the north to the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, in the south. The rift zone consists of four basins that have an average width of 50 kilometers. The rift can be observed on location at Rio Grande National Forest, White Sands National Monument, Santa Fe National Forest, and Cibola National Forest, among other locations.

The San Andres Mountains are a mountain range in the southwestern U.S. state of New Mexico, in the counties of Socorro, Sierra, and Doña Ana. The range extends about 75 miles (120 km) north to south, but are only about 12 miles (19 km) wide at their widest. The highest peak in the San Andres Mountains is Salinas Peak, at 8,965 feet.

The San Andres Mountains-(southern subrange of San Augustin Mountains), are separated from the Organ Mountains by San Augustin Pass, through which U.S. Highway 70 passes on its way to White Sands Missile Range, White Sands National Monument and Alamogordo. The Franklin Mountains are separated from the Organ Mountains by a 10-mile wide low area known as Anthony Gap. Much of this intervening land is part of Fort Bliss.

The San Augustin Mountains are a small mountain subrange at the southern terminus of the San Andres Mountains east of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Organ lies at the southwest foothills; the townsite, White Sands, NM lies to the southeast at the southwest of the Tularosa Valley.

U.S. Route 70 (US 70) is a part of the U.S. Highway System that travels from Globe, Arizona, east to Atlantic, North Carolina. In the U.S. state of New Mexico, US 70 extends from the Arizona state line south of Virden and ends at the Texas state line in Texico.

White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) is a United States Army military testing area of almost 3,200 sq mi (8,300 km²) in parts of five counties in southern New Mexico. The largest military installation in the United States, WSMR and the 600,000-acre (2,400 km²) McGregor Range Complex at Fort Bliss to the south are contiguous areas for military testing. On 9 July 1945, the White Sands Proving Ground was established for testing German and American long range rockets. Just seven days later, the first atomic bomb test, code named Trinity was exploded at Trinity Site, near the north boundary of the range.

Geology

Orthoclase specimen from the Organ Mountains Orthoclase-120489.jpg — Orthoclase specimen from the Organ Mountains

The Organ Mountains are made up of three major sections:

On the north end is a narrow ridge of vertically-jointed Tertiary granite ^[3] (more specifically, quartz monzonite) called The Needles. This is the most picturesque section and includes the highest point in the range, Organ Needle at an elevation of 8,990 feet (2,740 m).
On the south side of The Needles is a much wider section of extrusive igneous rock, mostly a purplish-gray rhyolite. This section forms the bulk of the mountain range and reaches heights nearly as great as The Needles. This section is cut in half by Soledad Canyon, which extends west from the east side of the range, separated by a low ridge and Soledad Pass from Bar Canyon on the west side.
The third portion of the Organ Mountains consists of the Bishop's Cap Hills on the southwest side of the range and Rattlesnake Ridge on the southeast side of the range. This third section is much smaller and lower in elevation than the other sections of the range, and consists of fault-block limestone similar to that of the San Andres and Franklin Mountains.

Sugarloaf Peak is an interesting feature on the East side of the Organ Mountains

Granite A common type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock with granular structure

Granite is a common type of felsic intrusive igneous rock that is granular and phaneritic in texture. Granites can be predominantly white, pink, or gray in color, depending on their mineralogy. The word "granite" comes from the Latin granum, a grain, in reference to the coarse-grained structure of such a holocrystalline rock. Strictly speaking, granite is an igneous rock with between 20% and 60% quartz by volume, and at least 35% of the total feldspar consisting of alkali feldspar, although commonly the term "granite" is used to refer to a wider range of coarse-grained igneous rocks containing quartz and feldspar.

Quartz monzonite or adamellite is an intrusive, felsic, igneous rock that has an approximately equal proportion of orthoclase and plagioclase feldspars. It is typically a light colored phaneritic (coarse-grained) to porphyritic granitic rock. The plagioclase is typically intermediate to sodic in composition, andesine to oligoclase. Quartz is present in significant amounts. Biotite and/or hornblende constitute the dark minerals. Because of its coloring, it is often confused with granite, but whereas granite contains more than 20% quartz, quartz monzonite is only 5–20% quartz. Rock with less than five percent quartz is classified as monzonite. A rock with more alkali feldspar is a syenite whereas one with more plagioclase is a quartz diorite. The fine grained volcanic rock equivalent of quartz monzonite is quartz latite.

Organ Needle is the highest point of the Organ Mountains in the south-central part of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It lies in Doña Ana County, 13 miles (20,921 m) east-northeast of Las Cruces and 4 miles (6 km) southwest of White Sands, headquarters of the White Sands Missile Range. It is at the southeast end of a narrow ridge of vertically jointed granite called The Needles.

Botany

The Organ Mountains may be the most botanically diverse mountain range in New Mexico, with approximately 870 vascular plant species. Several of these, including the Organ Mountains evening-primrose (Oenothera organensis) and smooth figwort (Scrophularia laevis), are endemic to the mountain range and occur only in small, scattered populations.

The Organ Mountains also have surprisingly high diversity in ferns, with 30 of the 56 species reported for New Mexico occurring within it. The high diversity and endemism of the range makes the Organ Mountains a very rewarding destination for the botanically-inclined, as well as a focus of botanical study.

A fern is a member of a group of vascular plants that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. They differ from mosses by being vascular, i.e., having specialized tissues that conduct water and nutrients and in having life cycles in which the sporophyte is the dominant phase. Ferns have complex leaves called megaphylls, that are more complex than the microphylls of clubmosses. Most ferns are leptosporangiate ferns, sometimes referred to as true ferns. They produce coiled fiddleheads that uncoil and expand into fronds. The group includes about 10,560 known extant species.

Endemism is the ecological state of a species being unique to a defined geographic location, such as an island, nation, country or other defined zone, or habitat type; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. The extreme opposite of endemism is cosmopolitan distribution. An alternative term for a species that is endemic is precinctive, which applies to species that are restricted to a defined geographical area.

The flora differs greatly between the three sections of the mountain range, with the two igneous sections (The Needles and the central extrusive portion) sharing relatively few species with the southern limestone portions. The limestone section includes some of the northernmost populations of lechuguilla (Agave lecheguilla), often considered an indicator species of the Chihuahuan Desert, whereas the igneous sections of the range include all of the endemic taxa and have botanical affinity with Madrean flora typical of the southwestern sky islands.

Hiking and climbing

The first documented climbs of Organ Mountain peaks were in the early 1890s, but most were done in the mid-1950s by climbers stationed at nearby Fort Bliss Army Base. The most prominent of these was R.L Ingraham, whose Guide to Climbing in the Organ Mountains^[4] remains a definitive reference. To quote from this work:

"There are fragmentary records and local hearsay which affirm that certain students of the (then) A and M College climbed the Organ Needle and the Rabbit Ears Plateau, two of the very few Organ peaks with walk-up routes, between 1900 and 1910; little San Agustin was probably climbed at or before this time, too. Technical climbing began only in the late 1940's, with some ascents by a group of German rocket scientists brought here to work at the White Sands Proving Grounds directly after the fall of Germany. In 1955 a group of local mountaineering enthusiasts banded together into a climbing club, which was briefly called the "Tularosa Climbing Club" before it took its present name of "The Southwestern Mountaineers". From then on technical climbing went on apace, until today there are at least several routes up every peak."

The Bureau of Land Management maintains hiking trails accessed from four sites in the Organ Mountains:

Aguirre Springs Campground and Baylor Canyon Road offer access to trails in The Needles from the east and west sides, respectively, and offer access to a trail that leads over Baylor Pass.^[5] Trails include the 4.5 mile Pine Tree Trail loop, where visitors can hike from 5,600 feet up to 6,880 feet. This trail covers a wide ecological range, from lower-elevation mountain mahogany scrub to ponderosa pine woodland on its upper parts.
Dripping Springs Natural Area^[6] on the west side of the central rhyolitic portion of the Organ Mountains has a set of interconnected low-elevation trails around La Cueva and entering the lower parts of Fillmore and Ice Canyons.
The Soledad Canyon Day Use Area^[7] provides a loop trail in the lower part of Bar Canyon, south of Dripping Springs on the west side of the range.

The southern limestone section is difficult to access and rarely visited. Bishop's Cap can be reached through rugged dirt roads, but has no developed trails. Rattlesnake Ridge is entirely within Fort Bliss and closed to the general public.

National monument status

President Obama designated the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks a national monument by executive authority on Wednesday, May 21, 2014. White House press secretary Jay Carney stated that "By establishing the monument, the president will permanently protect more than 496,000 acres to preserve the prehistoric, historic and scientific values of the area for the benefit of all Americans."^[8]

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References

↑ Organ Mountains — Desert Peak National Monument, May 21, 2014
↑ Mesilla Valley: Organ Mountains.
↑ Halka Chronic, Roadside Geology of New Mexico, Mountain Press, 1987, ISBN 0-87842-209-9, p. 132-133.
↑ http://web.nmsu.edu/~amato/ingrahamguide/Intro/Intro_master.html
↑ USDI Bureau of Land Management: Aguirre Spring Campground
↑ USDI Bureau of Land Management: Dripping Springs Natural Area
↑ USDI Bureau of Land Management: Soledad Canyon Day Use Area
↑
Madhani, Aamer. "Obama gives Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks monument status." Article in USA Today, May 19, 2014.
- Denver Nicks (08:37pm),"Obama Designates Half-Million Acre National Monument in New Mexico" Time.com accessdate=2014-05-22

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[1] Organ Mountains — Desert Peak National Monument, May 21, 2014

[2] Mesilla Valley: Organ Mountains.

[chronic-3] Halka Chronic, Roadside Geology of New Mexico, Mountain Press, 1987, ISBN 0-87842-209-9, p. 132-133.

[4] ttp://web.nmsu.edu/~amato/ingrahamguide/Intro/Intro_master.html

[5] USDI Bureau of Land Management: Aguirre Spring Campground

[6] USDI Bureau of Land Management: Dripping Springs Natural Area

[7] USDI Bureau of Land Management: Soledad Canyon Day Use Area

[8] Madhani, Aamer. "Obama gives Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks monument status." Article in USA Today, May 19, 2014.
Denver Nicks (08:37pm),"Obama Designates Half-Million Acre National Monument in New Mexico" Time.com accessdate=2014-05-22

[mwcw] Denver Nicks (08:37pm),"Obama Designates Half-Million Acre National Monument in New Mexico" Time.com accessdate=2014-05-22